Newspaper Title: ABN Amro conceals business owners from tax havens’
ABN Amro helps to shield private clients that they are the owners of companies in tax havens. Foreign subsidiaries of the State Bank act as a nominee shareholder, called nominee shareholders, to keep out of the picture the real stakeholders of the company.
The office complex Admiral Park, St Peter Port in Guernsey where ABN Amro subsidiary Martello is located. Photo: Garenne
according to a study of Allegiance and FD based the leaked documents from the Panamanian legal service Mossack Fonseca, or the Panama papers. In the documents Dive ABN daughter Martello on, based on the British Channel Island of Guernsey. This company acts as a shareholder in 25 companies in the British Virgin Islands.
As a result, it is unclear who these companies really are. Besides Martello ABN Amro has at least five other international subsidiaries that offer these services, such as the Channel Islands and Asia.
The Bank is the only major Dutch financial institution nominee shareholder ship ‘currently offering. Rabobank and ING set there to be stopped years ago.
Risk of abuse
the services of the subsidiaries of the state-owned bank is striking in light of the plans of Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem of Finance. He wants to increase the transparency of owners of companies by setting up a central register of all shareholders with a stake of 25% or more stand. This is fraud and money laundering to counter by corporations.
According to the international anti-money laundering organization Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the use of the so-called nominee shareholders one of the four most common ways to protect shareholders. This increases according to FATF risk of abuse.
Supervisor De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) maintains that Dutch banks may offer these services. The condition is that they abide by the local laws of the companies of which they protect the owners.
The Panama Papers show that the end of 2014, had a dispute about the identity of the customers of ABN. Legal services Mossack Fonseca asked when customer data from the company Cannon Asset Management, which manages the companies whose Martello nominee is shareholder. This is to comply with the legal requirements that are set to fight terrorism and money laundering.
But Mossack Fonseca got nothing. It was clear from the statement of Cannon Asset Management is impossible to give all customers Martello separate statements.
Commenting represents a spokesman for ABN Amro which Cannon can not speak on behalf of ABN Amro. In addition, ABN is in principle not on such requests, according to the response of the bank. “Mossack Fonseca is a commercial party. We provide (obviously) no customer data to external (non-competent) parties. “
Bank responsible
Cannon would not comment on questions of Allegiance and the FD. DNB does not specifically address the case of ABN Amro and Martello. In addition, the regulator said in a statement “to have a list of which banks offer what services.
DNB adds that banks themselves must ensure that they “are not used for such things as money laundering and terrorist financing” in the provision of nominee services. Financial institutions are required to analyze risks in this area systematically.
In 2015, the regulator noted based on a survey banks ‘more effort to identifying integrity risks and monitor, “said a spokesman DNB.
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